The strangest thing made with VFP?

[rianeiromiron]

Hello all!!!!!

This is just a simple curiosity from me, but, I would like to know what is the weirdest thing you have made using vfp? As an example (and according to my level of knowledge in VFP, some or a lot of you I suppose are more knoweledgable than me). I had to make an interface for a CAT (Tomography) where I used the serial port to control a device made by an electronics engineer to control the CAT. The other thing I made had to do with rounded corners in windows, where I learned to make multishaped windows (with the help of a guy from Argentina, don't remember the name).
So, what have you done, I would like to know.

bye.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Rmiron,

I don't understand why you think an interface to a tomography scanner is "weird". It sounds like a clever and creative piece of programming.

Mike


Mike Lewis
Edinburgh, Scotland

My Visual Foxpro web site:

http://www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk

My Crystal Reports web site:

http://www.ml-crystal.com

 

[rianeiromiron]

Well, maybe I used the wrong therm. What I meant was "unusual". One that goes out of the ordinary for us programmers, out of the usual database stuff......

 

[Mike Lewis]

Rmiron,

What I meant was "unusual". One that goes out of the ordinary for us programmers, out of the usual database stuff......

Perhaps the word you want is "sophisticated". Or how about "creative"?

Mike


Mike Lewis
Edinburgh, Scotland

My Visual Foxpro web site:

http://www.ml-consult.demon.co.uk

My Crystal Reports web site:

http://www.ml-crystal.com

 

[DSummZZZ]

I've worked on a few 'clever' things with Fox. Since Fox was designed more around RDBMS, I think once you get out of that "box" you've blazed new paths.
And that's one of the issues that really annoys me. The versatility of Fox isn't widely known. Most people think you have to use some flavor of C or VB to get anything accomplished, because that's what's popular and marketed.
If they only knew...
Fox can handle API calls, class libraries from other languages, COM, and so on.

Anyway, I remember someone in this forum working on an aircraft guidance system using VFP. I thought it was quite an ambitious and unique project for VFP.

As for me, some of the more unique things I've worked on involve communications with other platforms with which the usual methods of communication (ODBC, ADO and so on) are not an option. That's the main reasoning behind some of the applcation examples on my web site.
For example, yes, there are hundreds of ftp clients out there, but our mainframe's ftp host doesn't conform to the 'norms' at all.
I also write applications (in C) on the mainframe and I use VFP to talk to them for operational status and health.

-Dave Summers-

Even more Fox stuff at:

http://www.davesummers.net/foxprolinks.htm

 

[torturedmind]

i dunno if this qualify. but i made a program for testing for electrostatic discharge of the human body. since i work in an micro-electronics manufacturing company, we require everyone to test their body for electrostatic discharge by way of a groundline worn on wrist of a person.

kilroy
philippines

"Illegitimis non carborundum!"

 

[rianeiromiron]

Wow!!!! That IS clever. That's the kind of stuff I was talking about!!!!!!!

(keep on answering, fellows!!!!!)

 

[ctbaker]

I wrote an instant messaging client using VFP which issues net send commands. It has a message history buffer, user names to send to, pre-written commmon messages and a resend last message button.

Kind of stupid but since we can't use real IMs at work this was a convenient way to send messages to coworkers without have to type net send <username> all the time

 

[rgbean]

My company has written video poker, slots and Bingo games to be played on touch screen monitors. Some of these used a rather interesting client server setup using Winsock and multiple COM (VFP) objects, so that users could play some games together or against each other as the rules of the games allowed. None of them looked at all like a VFP app!

Rick

 

[torturedmind]

sir rick,

now that's what i call creative!
peace!

kilroy
philippines

"Illegitimis non carborundum!"

 

[TheRambler]

I think this application should be mentioned in this thread.

I've got a VFP 3.0 application running in an aircraft...My app basically reads serial data from 3 comm ports (GPS and engine information) and displays it on the screen (bargraphs, speed altitude tapes, compass, etc) I use quite a few timers and have a lot of screen updates in the form of BMP's.

See thread184-915023

 

[TheRambler]

Also, check VFP Success Stories.

Well, I haven't done anything like that yet, but from time to time I need to show what can be done with Visual FoxPro (or even FPD, like the Euro Tunnel) to my Delphi colleages.

 

[andyrice]

To keep this thread going.
I made a form for displaying Tif files.
It uses the Kodak Imaging ActiveX.


Andy Rice
San Diego, CA

 

[Mike Gagnon]

Most manufacturing robots (like these

http://www.motoman.com/)

do have have a visual programming interface, but rather a keypad that lets you record the movements of the arm and write a script that will be used to run it. I was requested to design a visual interface that would accept a 2D drawing and with a click of the mouse you would record the position and build the script visually.

Mike Gagnon

If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

 

[justamistere]

For the "Direct Mail" database cleansing...

I created a Profanity-checker, "Dictionary" Lookup Utility to parse each word in every field, in every record and do an indexed lookup, to compare it to a list. Users can choose one or more dictionary .dbf list.

The unusual part is that for the .dbf lookup file I created some simple Encrypt/Decript methods. On-the-fly, it "Encrypts" one word at a time of the data and does an indexed search, therefore making it fast.

We wouldn't want our users to email someone our list of "Delete Expletives,Profane, Vulgar, Offensive, Abusive, Derogatory, Insulting, Blasphemy, Taboo, Swearing", words.

Just-A-Mister-"E.", justamistere, ...a Mystery, not yet an MVP.

 

[crewchiefpro5]

I write a program used by Drag Racers all around the world to track car setups, calculate proper setups, and predict performance.

In prediction mode our system calculates the effects of all weather parameters and wind on the performance of the vehicle. We calculate fuel curve, clutch engagement points, throttle timers, and Elapsed Times based on changes in calculated altitudes and specialized weather formulas.

We loop through our stored runs literally millions of times to do "What If" analysis and compare these calculations with what happened.

Some of our customers have engines that make EIGHT THOUSAND HORSEPOWER using nitromethane as a fuel, and we need to calculate how to get that power to the ground without spinning the rear tires. We use custom calculations to predict how much clutch and fuel the engine should have to maintain traction and produce the most horsepower. It is a fine line... cross it and you chew up a $40,000 engine.

We also sell complete weather stations that feed weather conditions directly into our software through a serial port or USB. We update our calculations about once a minute and send the updated weather data and vehicle setup information out to a pager every 2 minutes.

This is a fun business, I have sold around 3,600 programs to racers all over the world.

Don Higgins

http://www.crewchiefpro.com

 

[TonyScarpelli]

I used FoxPro 2.6 to interface to Infusion pumps that would gather information from the pump and display the pump results at a nurse's station. It also used a CRT touch screen.

And when FP became object oriented, 5 or 6 I think, I used it to design a screen robot that had motors, wheels and sensors that would go around a virtual room bumping into walls. You could also control it with a mouse, and you could add different types of sensors. I'll probably use it to try and win that autonomous vehicle prize where you have to have the thing follow a road in the Arizona desert and travel a couple hundred miles. But you could also do that with Basic as well.

But if you want really good stuff, you should check out what Forth could do. Giant size, slow FP can't compare to that language. Forth was originally used to control radio telescopes. I used it in a few hardware projects because it was fast and took up little memory space. And it was perfect for robots. I had a word processor in Forth that ran on a TRS 80 and that can still beat the speed c**p out of Word. It's sad that it isn't used much any more.

CU


Tony Scarpelli
Clinical Engineering Dept.
Maine Medical Center
Portland, Maine 04102

 

[craigsboyd]

TSR80 (model 1)... now THAT was a computer. 4KB of memory with an optional 11KB expansion pack (that was a whopping 15KB!), used a cassette recorder for storage. Completely off topic and truly my first love. Ahhhhh... the good old days.

http://www.sweetpotatosoftware.com

 

[alvechurchdata]

4KB of memory

I was controlling power stations with that in the 1970's - proper memory too with a hand-wound ferrite core for each and every bit.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk

 

[Olaf Doschke]

I read out electronic scales / digital balances (know what I mean? measuring wights) with foxpro, although this doesn't really count, as I use a third party component for the COM port (RS232), that is CommTools for VFP.

I also send/receive files via RS232 with CommTools from a personal computer to a notebook and vice versa.

Bye, Olaf.